TRAVELS WITH MATTIE

This week has been relaxing. We slept in, drank coffee, spaced out, and hung out with Sid and Anni. That's basically it. Here are some pictures from our week of summer camp at Canepa Ranch. Girls at the barn, ready to float the Truckee. Walking past Butch Wierdhorse. On the banks of the Truckee, ready for some floating. That building in the background is our place. Sid charging. These three buddies. Finding beaver-gnawed sticks and crawdads. Sid and Anni. They're weird. Sid with her "Pinchy" - just like Grandpa's at the house in SLO. BEAST. Caught right in the backyard on a little teeny fly. Greg went for a swim while trying to net this one and my phone was sacrificed. Oh well. That wasn't the first time it's been swimming in the Truckee. Greg's gorgeous rainbow. This was exciting. Riding horses with Sid and Anni in Truckee!  A fun little adventure with Chauncy, Tommy, Valentino, and Ro...

Whoa. Another big week with: great friends, family, mountains, water, streams, fishing, Mattie, beer, wandering, mosquitoes, the Mobil Station, Disneyland, tent-life, driving, hot tubs, bald eagles (+ tequila), and general adventuring all over the place. We left last week and headed to SLO, where we stayed at Mom & Dad's for a night for a fun BBQ with Scott & Co. Greg made smokey ribs, we ate corn and cake pops, and it's always nice sleeping in my old bedroom. The next morning (Saturday), we drove down to the cabin - God, I love the cabin - where we quickly got ourselves ready for Chris and Kelly Veres' wedding in Carpinteria. It was a beautiful celebration at a really cool park, where we saw many old college friends, and I poured an entire mason jar of bourbon on Greg's pants. He's a good sport. Congratulations Chris and Kelly! Yeti, Dad, Scott, Laura and the kids drove down to Santa Monica on Saturday, but we took an extra day to sit at the cabin und...

Another great week of wandering, friends, beer, food, hiking, fishing, mosquitos and biting flies, beer, beer, etcetera and on and on forever. Here's kind of what's happened over the past week, in pictures!    I wandered solo in the Owens Valley for a few days. There are places like this, that make you wonder if you weren't born in the wrong decade. Or maybe century.  It was hot, there are sphinx moth caterpillars everywhere, I saw a big coyote and scared a few sleeping deer. The evenings are perfect and on a few days there were more scattered thundershowers.   When you are alone in the middle of nowhere, it is totally acceptable to drive into town and buy a large pizza and three sides of ranch from Nik n' Willy's (duh) and just eat that for (late) breakfast, lunch, dinner AND dessert while out adventuring on the Benton Crossing Road for the whole day. The new little used adventure mobile, looking right at home ne...

And just like that, it's basically July. How does this happen? Summer always flies, and this one more than most. This will be short since I'm just bumming out at Black Velvet Coffee in Mammoth before heading back into the mountains, but here's a quick recap of our recent weeks. We've been having more amazing adventures, road trips, and reunions. First: IDAHO!  We took a great long weekend to go hang out around Eagle, ID visiting Kevin, Dawn, Bigsley, Scout, Felix and Bandit at their new beautiful home just west of Boise. It was a gorgeous, easy drive through the desert to get to their little oasis home. When we weren't watching the quailies (hi Dan!) and foal at the little ranch just out their backyard, we were seeing some cool sights, going on very short hikes with Mattie, drinking great beers, watching osprey (and maybe a river otter) snag trout in the Boise River, sleeping in (such bums), catching a soccer game here and there, explori...